Her intelligent, poised presentation (with numerous slides of conceptual renderings and floorplans) detailed the results of her firm’s failed attempts to find a design solution that would “serve the museum’s mission and curatorial goals” while preserving the Tod Williams Billie Tsien-designed American Folk Art Museum. (Those architects were notable by their absence.) “We were unable to find an adaptive reuse solution,” Diller said.

During the question-and-answer period, Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art, stated flatly that, notwithstanding pleas by some that the knockdown be delayed and reconsidered, “we’ve worked through a lot of options and we’ve made our decision” [emphasis added].

The sponsoring organizations of last night’s event say they will soon post a video of the discussion on their websites (linked in second paragraph, above), which will enable you to get a full appreciation, which a blog post cannot adequately convey, of Diller’s presentation (as well as less compelling remarks by Lowry and Ann Temkin, MoMA’s chief curator of painting and sculpture).

Here’s a slide that enumerated the agreed-upon goals of the project:

For a more detailed rundown of what happened last night, see Fred Bernstein‘s recap on the website of Architectural Record, whose editor-in-chief, Cathleen McGuigan, was one of the onstage panelists.

And here are my tweets highlighting the moments that stood out for me, including one (at the top) that’s of more interest to art-lings than to architecture aficionados:

CultureGrrl

I’m a veteran cultural journalist and lecturer with many pieces in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and major art magazines. I've been a cultural contributor on New York Public Radio (WNYC and WQXR) and provided arts commentary on NPR [Read More …]

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